The Fortune Queen of Altea
by thejapanesemapletree
Summary: Lady Allura nodded and opened her eyes."You are too suspicious." Keith put his fists on the table. "I believe— " "No. You come here asking the wrong questions and seeking the wrong answers."


The Fortune Queen of Altea was brushing her cat in her black limousine.

The glossy exterior shone orange in the light of the setting sun. She sat in the very back of the car, her passenger side window down and her silvery hair tied up and her large sunglasses masking most of her face. The rest of the interior could not be seen through the tinted windows, but the white marks where the underside thread was coming up from scratches in the leather seat fanned behind her like odd confetti or feathery wings. She put the cat and brush down on her lap.

Keith stood up from the bench where he was observing her. He approached where she was parked against the sidewalk, his wrists tense but his determination to catch her not allowing him to stop.

She did not notice him, and she leaned forward and said, "Let's go home, Coran."

Her chauffeur hit the gas. And Keith was let standing there, watching as the limousine pulled away into the growing night.

.

It was rumored that the Fortune Queen came from some long-dead line of royals, and somewhere along the way her family had been cursed to have lifespans of nearly a hundred years and see the deaths of everyone they ever loved before they happened.

Keith thought the rumor may be true as he mounted the stairs to her large manor, using the iron door knocker and being greeted by a man with an orange mustache. He looked Keith up and down. It was like he knew without asking.

"Come in."

He led Keith to a darkened parlor, where thick velvet curtains covered the windows, and the only light came from a shaded floor lamp and collection of tall candles. A desk with a telephone was on one side of the room, while a table with two longue chairs occupied the other. Keith pulled out a bundle of tattered dollars and handed it to the man, who counted them thoughtfully. He nodded once.

"Lady Allura will be with you soon."

He left through a beaded doorway that chimed and glistened. And Lady Allura entered the room from it not a minute after, in all her dark glory.

She eyed Keith much like how the man had done, her gaze sure and piercing like an arrow afire. Diamond earrings swayed as she approached Keith, her expression firm and eyes unwavering. She had a strange, flowery perfume Keith could not name, but he swore he knew from somewhere else. She gestured to the table with a gloved hand.

"Please, sit."

Keith sat at the furthest chair, uneased enough that he did not trust her behind him. She collected a pack of cards from a drawer in the desk, and she sat in the other chair, taking a moment to smooth her black dress and fix her bracelets. Satisfied, she met Keith's eyes and slid the cards towards him.

"Shuffle them. We will see what the cards say."

Keith shuffled them twice, messily, and straightened then out before setting them back on the table. Lady Allura drew a curved line across the table with her pointer finger.

"Place the cards in three piles."

Keith divided the stack in three and put them in a line. Lady Allura overturned the top card from the pile furthest left to revel a queen, and repeated her action with the pile furthest right to uncover a three.

She overturned the middle card, and although Keith knew the set of clubs to be black, the jack could not have looked more red if it had been stained with blood. Keith felt an icy wrongness in the center of his chest, and he shivered as the two-eyed jack stared at him with small, telling eyes. Lady Allura looked at each of the cards in turn.

"The one closest to you—the one you love—works in ways you least expect."

Keith clenched his jaw. And with that, Lady Allura shuffled all the cards back together, her eyes sad as she piled them next to her. She rested her hands on the table and interlocked her dark, gloved fingers, looking to Keith with the same melancholy.

"Tell me—why did you come here?"

Keith forced himself to relax. He unfurled his fists from clutching the knees of his pants.

"I came here seeking answers."

Lady Allura released a small sigh. She shut her eyes and shook her head solemnly.

"People like you always do. And it seldom does them any good."

The first heat of anger flushed Keith's cheeks. His tone became more bitter.

"People like me?"

Lady Allura nodded and opened her eyes. "You are too suspicious."

Keith put his fists on the table. "I believe— "

"No. You come here asking the wrong questions and seeking the wrong answers."

Keith hushed his remark. Lady Allura stood silently and took the cards with her to the desk.

"You come here to have your fears confirmed, or at least justified enough for you to excuse them," she said from behind the desk. "You wish for the worst. And that makes you find the worst."

The flush deepened. Lady Allura returned to the table with a stack of money much like the one Keith had given the man, and she placed it upon the table before Keith. She stared down at him like she saw him as a soul soon to experience the pain and ecstasy of rapture.

"The future is so susceptible to change. My advice is to go home and forget you ever came here."

She nudged the money closer.

"I will not turn a card up anymore. Not for you."

The anger became so intense Keith almost quivered. He shot up from his seat, but she remained unmoved, that same sad look on her face as she watched the wrath coil within him. He bared his teeth a little.

"Don't patronize me," he growled. "I came here for more, and if you refuse to give that to me, I have no business staying."

He marched towards the door, the money and tension left behind him like an evil miasma. He swung open the door and glanced back, one last aside on his tongue.

"Goodbye."

He slammed the door so hard the door knocker rattled. She heard him stomp down the stairs and sighed softly through her nose, remaining where she was until the sound of him vanished. Then, she approached the desk once more, picking up the phone and dialing and listening as it rang. She spoke when the tone clipped off.

"Hello? Yes, I would like to leave a message for Lance McClain…"

.

Keith stepped off the bus and walked towards his apartment, shaken by what Lady Allura had said. He ascended the outside stairs, and he was wound so tight he could hardly fit the key in the lock. The door finally gave way with a characteristic creak, and he bumped it open and called inside.

"Lance? Are you home?"

He was met with darkness and silence. His heart fell like a shattering china plate. He stepped in and closed the door, flicking on the lights to an empty house.

He found a note on the refrigerator door from Lance saying he would be working late. Keith plucked the note from under the broken magnet, looking at every heart Lance had drawn with more sadness than usual.

When Lance came home from serving drinks at the billiard tables, he returned smiling although he smelled of the aftershave and cigar smoke of pompous businessmen. He always scooped Keith up for a kiss, and Keith often thought he could die like that, against his tan skin and their lips together and nothing else to worry them. But, every time, Lance eventually put him down and asked about his day, and Keith had to contemplate the best way to say he probably did not make enough tips to cover the water bill that month.

There was no way Lance was happy like this.

Keith rested the note on the kitchen table. He was unbelievably tired, and he decided it was best he went to bed.

He undressed and crawled into the cold bed. They were in bad need of a bigger bed, but they had not been able to scrape together enough money to get one. Keith tried not to think of such things or what Lady Allura had said as he curled up under the quilt alone.

Keith did not know what he had done to deserve to meet Lance, one day after his shift at the bar when it started to rain, and Keith took shelter under the overhang at the billiard club. Lance had come out the glass doors, inviting him to take a step inside out of the rain with a cocky grin Keith at the time had found infuriating. He managed to sneak Keith into the back room without his boss knowing, and Keith waited there for the rain to pass. Lance popped in whenever he could to charm Keith in an adversarial way he could not explain, and he managed to entice a future date and a kiss out of Keith before the sky cleared.

God, Keith loved Lance so much. Lance deserved more than what Keith could give him.

Lance deserved to live in a grand house like Lady Allura, not a rickety apartment on the bad side of town with water-stained wallpaper and scuffed floors and warped window panes. He deserved to be well-treated, and well-fed, and Keith could hardly provide himself those things with his job as a daytime bartender. What Lance deserved was a rich wife and a nice house and a big family, and Keith could never give him those things.

Keith's throat and chest tightened. He turned over restlessly, and he burrowed over to Lance's side of the bed, where he hoped some imprint of him would give him comfort. He hugged Lance's pillow to his face.

And he smelled that strange, flowery perfume.

Keith jolted away from the pillow. He stared at it in utter horror, his mind a maze and his heart even worse as a thousand terrible thoughts and a thousand more terrible emotions filled his entire body. But, one emotion pulled to the forefront away from the rest, and it was not new to him, and he hated even having to consider it.

Betrayal.

Keith began to quake. He threw off the covered and switched on the light, shoving out of bed to find the clothes he had discarded.

.

Lance leaned against the table and crossed his arms.

"Keith came to you? What for?"

"I fear it is because of you." Allura twisted her gloves worriedly. "I fear he is doubting himself."

Lance heard his heart hum like it was about to shatter, and he frowned at Allura's words. He squeezed his arms closer.

"What do you mean?"

"From what you've told me of Keith and his past, I understand he did not grow up with a family like ours—with any permanent family at all." She looked down at her wrung hands. "He has been conditioned to believe that whatever good he experiences will come to a swift and painful end. I believe he fears that what good you two share will be lost in the long run."

Lance's heart chattered again. He kicked off the table.

"Keith shouldn't think that."

He said it to the wrong person who needed to hear it, and they both knew so. Allura unlaced her hands and looked towards the windows with the curtains peeled back to show the streetlights and fallen night.

"I think some part of him knows that. But, a greater part is winning out."

A chill hung in the air. Lance went and sat on the windowsill, letting the silence linger as he sorted out his thoughts.

"Just… _God."_ Lance grabbed a fistful of his hair. "Doesn't he know that I love him?"

"He loves you," Allura confirmed. "Enough that he thinks you shouldn't love him."

Lance nodded slowly. Then, he started, and he smacked his hand against the window in awe.

"Wait— _Keith?"_

.

Keith walked blindly down the sidewalk, shaking so much and his throat so raw he thought he might vomit. The bus was occupied by the early drunks that wanted nothing to do with him, and the sidewalks were quiet save for the buzz of the streetlights and barks of dogs as families settled into their homes for the night.

Keith knew he should have expected this, but the fact did not make it ache any less. Keith knew Lance deserved better than him—so why did it hurt so much that he had actually gone out and tried to find it? In Keith's mind, what they had could not last forever, and it had already gone on far longer than it should have. So, why was he here now: marching across the city to confront the woman who had done it all?

Keith did not know, and he could not reason himself to turn around by the time he got to her manor. He recognized her wrought iron fence and wide steps, and he saw the blue hydrangeas under the windows looked purple in the dark. He noticed the curtains were pulled back.

And he froze.

In the nearest window, visible against the dull light from the inside, Lance stood in stark relief beside the curtains pushed aside. He had on his work uniform, and Keith could not read the shadowy expression on his face. But Keith knew that face. Knew it so well it hurt.

Hot, quick tears spilled from his eyes of their own volition. Keith did not want them—he had no need to _feel this way_ —and smearing them only succeeded in making his vision blurry. Scrubbing away the tears or denying his feelings did nothing to quell the pain. Keith clutched his face and spun around, nothing else to do but go back the way he came.

He should have expected this—this is what Lance _deserved_. And, yet…

Keith heard the door slam open. The sound of shoes booking it down the sidewalk did not overcome the sound of his heart as it jumbled around his chest in a thousand shards, and knowing it was Lance only made it break into a thousand more. He did not even make it to the end of the street before Lance caught up to him.

"Keith!"

As sob threatened to explode from Keith's throat. He stopped at the end of the sidewalk, where the red light from the changing walk signal cascaded like sacrificial blood over his face. Keith refused to look up from his hands, and Lance stopped abruptly in front of him.

"Keith… Baby, what's wrong?"

Keith rived away from his hands, if only to look more vicious. The signal began to flicker, and he struck.

" _Go away!"_

Keith saw Lance's shocked expression, and how sad his eyes turned in the aftermath. He hesitated, his bottom lip quivering, and his senses finally accepted the sight of Keith with ugly tears streaming down his cheeks and his clothes in rumpled disarray.

"Keith… Baby…"

Lance reached towards him, and Keith could not bear to shove him away even now. He wrapped his arms around him, and Keith's face brushed his collar bone, and Keith smelled the high-class cigars and Lady Allura's perfume on his clothes. The tears poured tenfold into the fabric, and Keith did not raise his arms in return.

Lance tried again, "Keith, what's _wrong?"_

Keith wanted to push away—to not have his emotions mixed and enflamed by Lance's embrace—but he could not bring any part of him to do so. He merely bowed his head and shook.

"You could have told me you weren't happy," his voice quivered as much as his body. "You didn't have to play me like this."

Lance stiffened up. The signal blinked green, and Lance turned his head, his voice bright and confused in the shell of Keith's ear.

"Not happy—what do you _mean?"_

"I understand that I'm not good enough," Keith's words were nearly in shambles. "That I don't make enough money—that maybe I don't love you enough. You didn't have to sneak around behind my back. I understand that you should be with Lady Allura."

Lance when so still Keith could not feel him breathe, the confession like a cold knife that slowly gutted out his innards as every part of what Keith said dawned on him. Even the wind and the streetlights seemed to grow quieter, and Keith almost did not hear the walk signal flicker to red.

"Keith… Oh, Keith, I would never do that to you."

His voice was soft, and it held more pain that Keith had heard from Lance in their entire time together. Lance backed away and cupped Keith's jaw in his hands, Keith's face still runny and the wrong colors, and Lance still so obviously in love with it that for a long moment Keith could not think, letting their mouths work together instinctively until Lance pulled away. He stared at Keith in honest affection, his thumb brushing away tears.

"I don't care about how much money we have, or how little you think you deserve me," his tone was still buttered-toast soft. "I love you. That's what makes me happy being with you."

The water fell away from his thumb, and the bluish streetlights made him seem to Keith like an angel aglow.

"You shouldn't believe you future will be so much like your past. Otherwise, you will miss out on the happiness you have now."

Lance kissed him again. And Keith felt as if all the walls preventing him from the pearly gates shattered: like he could live instead of die here, and everything that could or will be would be worth the effort and hope he put into it. He believed, at least for this moment, that Lance would be with him forevermore, and that every difficult heartache and defeat and suffering of his soul was behind him.

Lance broke the kiss. He smiled that smile Keith had grown to love, and it was truly too much to bear. More tears rolled from Keith's eyes.

"Lance," it was all Keith could think to say as he practically sobbed into Lance's shirt collar. _"Lance."_

"It's okay, baby," Lance hushed Keith as he embraced him again. "Allura is my cousin. I don't have any interest in her aside from that."

Keith was too overwhelmed to reply. Above, the streetlight puttered once, and the walk signal beside them switched to green.

.

Inside her manor, Allura sat at the table with her cards before her and a cooling cup of tea. She turned over the middle card, and she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"How curious… It appears we will soon have a marriage in the family."

.

 **A/N:** This is based off 'Dark Lady' by Cher, but with less love triangles and murder.


End file.
